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What percent of blacks were slaves in 1865? Were they all slaves?

In the entire nation, the % was likely under 30% but this is just a guess. There were many free blacks in the south and also the blacks owned slaves. I did see a statistic that in the south ONLY 2% of white families ever owned a slave. The rest were too poor to afford a slave.

The only folks who ever bought slaves were those with large 'Wal-mart' type operations...farms of such size, that required a massive amount of manpower to keep them running. When you look at the population of Alabama in 1850, you will find that almost 95 percent of the white male population over the age of 21....never owned a slave. This really tells a big part of the story....because it repeats in almost every southern state. Why would non-slave owners go to war over rich slave-owners? Because this was only a fraction of the entire problem at hand. The vast audience in America today fails to grasp that there were massive differences between southerners and northerners. Lincoln had already figured out how the electoral college would help him win in the mid-1850s and devised a strategy to totally lock out southerners in the 1860 election. When you look at the future of the south on the day after the election....it was all downhill. A Republican president would be sitting in the White House for the next 20 years and they would eventually set all slaves free with no compensation for slave-owners. We all need to sit down and reread the whole chapter in American history, but this time...skip Uncle Tom's Cabin and the movie Roots....get some real history books and understand America in 1850.

I did see a statistic that in the south ONLY 2% of white families ever owned a slave.

This is revisionist history.In the 1860 census there were 76,651 White Families in Texas and 21,878 of them owned slaves. 70,994 in Louisiana and 22,033 owned slaves.

In 1850 there were 347,525 slave holders in the South (head of Households)

I am NOT supporting ANY payment, just correcting your facts.

I did see a statistic that in the south ONLY 2% of white families ever owned a slave. The rest were too poor to afford a slave.

The 1850 census showed that there were about 2.25 million southerners in slave owning families -- out of 6 million. That of course is about 1/3. In SC and MS slave ownership devolved on 50% of whites. The taker of the 1850 census, J.E.B. DeBow proudly pointed out that there were more slave holders by percentage in the south than there were owners of real property in the north.

Walt

Here's an answer to your question

Black Slaveowners

While others will sit and argue till the cows come home, these are documented facts. You'll notice that one of the largest slaveowners in SC was black, and that there were not many large plantations holding all the slaves. Also consider that Indians held slaves as well. Within New Orleans 28 percent of blacks held slaves an interesting fact considering that nationwide less than 2 percent of whites held slaves